The state budget crisis leaves lawmakers with little choice but to let some state colleges and universities increase tuition without legislative approval, Gov. Bill Ritter said Thursday, reversing his position on the issue.

The proposal is being drafted in the form of a bill that could be introduced as early as next month.

It would require heads of state schools to submit financial plans showing how they would assure a public-college education would remain affordable in the face of tuition hikes. Plans would have to be reviewed by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education before the budget process for 2011-12 begins, said John Karakoulakis, the Department of Higher Education's director of legislative affairs.

Ritter said last summer that he wouldn't sign legislation giving tuition control to colleges and universities. But Thursday he said the state's already struggling schools will face even harder times without such a fix.

"Nobody anticipated the depth or protracted length of the downturn," said Ritter, who announced in January that he would not seek re-election.

The state is facing at least a $1.3 billion shortfall next year and will have closed a $2.2 billion deficit in the current year that ends in June.

Lawmakers have sliced higher-education spending over the past three budget years, giving schools $623 million in federal stimulus money to make up for the loss. The federal money will no longer be available in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

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The change in tuition-setting would be a short-term measure for the next year or two, Karakoulakis said.

Ritter's Higher Education Strategic Planning Steering Committee, which has agreed in principle to the temporary fix, would continue to work on a long-term solution, even if a bill makes it to the floor and passes.

Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, and Senate Majority Leader John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, are pushing for a fix that could include tuition flexibility.

The legislature currently sets a ceiling on how much state colleges and universities can increase tuition each year. The current ceiling ranges from 5 percent to 9 percent, depending on the school.

A tuition-flexibility plan would differ from school to school, said D. Rico Munn, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Colleges that predominantly serve a lower-income population could lose students if they raise tuition too much.

Research schools such as the University of Colorado at Boulder, which educate students from a wider income spread, could increase tuition to bolster their budgets and financial-aid offerings.

Once schools raise tuition, state tax money could be funneled to colleges that aren't able to raise tuition significantly, backers of the plan say.

But any institution that got the right to raise tuition would have to guarantee it could provide financial aid to those who need it and qualify to attend.

CU president Bruce Benson, who is a proponent of the idea, said that if CU could set its own tuition, a large portion of the increase would go toward financial aid.

"The individual institutions are in a better position to craft financial models for how they would do this," Munn said.